Raise Your Hand
December 13th, 2007 by Carbon CoalitionYesterday’s GOP debate moderator Carolyn Washburn asked the candidates to raise their hands if they believe climate change is a serious threat and caused by human activity. Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Rudy Giuliani were the only four candidates to raise their hands.
“I’m not doing hand shows today,” Fred Thompson objected and said that he needed a minute to explain.
McCain quickly jumped in:
“Let me put it to you this way: Suppose that climate change is not real and all we do is adopt green technologies which our economy and our technology is perfectly cable of. Then all we’ve done is given our kids a cleaner world. But suppose they’re wrong and climate change is real and we’ve done nothing. What kind of a planet are we going to pass on to the next generation of Americans? It is real. We can do it with cap-and-trade, with capitalist and free enterprise motivation.”
Giuliani weighed in on the science:
“Climate change is real. It’s happening. I believe human beings are contributing to it and the way to deal with it is through energy independence…and I think that our party should embrace this as an issue for us.”
Romney was eager to jump in and share what has become his global warming catch phrase:
“At the same time, we call it global warming, not America warming, so let’s not put a burden on us alone and have the rest of the world skate by without having to participate in this effort. It’s a global effort.”
Climate change finally provided the defining moment of a national debate and it is clear that some of the leading Republican candidates were eager to talk about this issue on the national stage.
